The Structure of the Children's Musical Narrative on the Example of V. Rebikov's Miniature "Lesson Preparation" Op. 37 No. 2

Shefova Elena Aleksandrovna ORCID: 0000-0002-3501-3210 PhD in Art History Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Music Training and Socio-Cultural Projects of the Institute of Culture and Art «Lipetsk State Pedagogical University named after P.P. Semenov-Tian-Shansky» 398008, Russia, Lipetsk region, Lipetsk, Kalinina str., 1b, office 31 shefova_e@mail.ru

Modern musicology is increasingly attracting new impulses and approaches of data from other spheres of humanitarian knowledge into its everyday life. Modern analytical models allow us to set many tasks that music science could not solve before. One of such problematic areas is the appeal to narrative analysis as an understanding method. The relevance is dictated by the needs of analytical and practical musicology to open up opportunities from a different point of view to involve the theory of narrative in the field of music, which can be applied at the beginning of the interpretative process. The purpose of the article will be to examine the structure of the children's musical narrative based on the material of Vladimir Rebikov's play "Lesson Preparation" from the piano album "Pictures for Children" Op. 37. In this regard, it is advisable to note that the narrative means the presence of a musical narrative structure involving the narrator's voice, plot, protagonist, chronotope. The analysis of these components will enable a comprehensive understanding of the concept of the composition.

Narrative (English and French narrative – Lat. narrare "to tell, to narrate"), in other words – represents a narrative describing an action. The narrative is discrete, so in addition to the logical structure, there are aesthetic, emotional and associative perspectives.

Noting the works related to complex scientific research, it is worth highlighting, in fact, the author of the narrative approach, V. Schmidt, as well as F. Ankersmith, who equate the creation of a narrative with the process of interpretation. Most scientific works are devoted to individual manifestations of the narrative – E. Popov, V. Tyup. As for the musical art, the theme of narrative in music remains an area of discussion. Thus, according to A. Lyakhovich, "This species category is closely related to generic (and not identical to it) categories of musical content and musical semantics" ^[1].

Liu Xiu's article "The specifics of the appearance of narrative in music: genre aspect", revealing the possibilities and prospects of bringing narrative theory into the field of music science, emphasizes the presence of semantics that contribute to the interaction of musical and extra-musical factors in the work ^[2]. But T. Tsaregradskaya explains the viability of the narrative more convincingly. Referring to the works of B. Almen and W. Allanbrook, the analyst, using the example of the Prelude of Op. 34 No. 7 by D. Shostakovich, declares the idea of topos: "The legacy of the rhetorical era, a characteristic means of organizing classical music of the 18th century, a "System of common places" of musical discourse that connects certain areas of content with recognizable expressive means ^{[3, p. 14]}. The essence of B. Almen's method "represents a vast area of "content analytics" and outlines the subject field of musical narrative" ^{[3, p. 16]}. In his approach, the musicologist adheres to the position of L. Kramer, "who considered the appeal to narrative analysis effective where structural analysis usually does not reveal anything significant ^{[3, p. 15]}.

In this article, we will adhere to the idea of toposes (in linguistics, V. Propp calls them narrotemes), since the type of art of the XX century will be appropriate in the works of the Art Nouveau direction, but based on elements of the classical musical language. As for the narrative with the added adjective "childish", there are a number of works in pedagogy, for example, by Yu. Knyazev, E. Mikhailova, N. Yurieva with the presentation of a special set of narrative material inherent only to a child. Thus, E. Mikhailova understands the children's narrative as "a verbal representation by a child of a chain of phenomena, events in a certain and spatial correlation" ^{[4, p. 67]}. As for musicology, this article is the first attempt to consider the musical children's narrative, which, as it will be proved, is an organizing multilevel system of the work. Topos analysis will reveal musical ideas, their transformation and interaction.

Observations on children's piano music and music in general show that for many composers the representation of children's musical narrative is a priority. The form of the children's musical narrative is characterized by diversity: lexical preferences defined by the children's picture of the world (characters, titles, remarks, design) and musical "mistakes" (syncopation, dynamics, accents, pauses, rhythm, fermata, pedal, harmony, register, pitch).

S. Grokhotov on the pages of his book "R. Shuman and his surroundings" quotes Evgenia Shuman, who passed one of the plays of the Album for Youth with her mother: "I remember in The Furious Horseman I played sforzati without any understanding, “anemic” – as my mother put it. “When such a frenzied rider jumps back and forth across the room, he bumps into a table or some other object with his “horse”,” she said. And then I was able to play these sforzati right away, the very idea of surprise inherent in sforzato was revealed to me once and for all, and the understanding of how it arises between two quieter notes" ^{[5, p. 103]}. In this example, R. Schumann expressed, on the one hand, the clumsiness of the child (dynamic allocation of individual notes, increases, sf), and on the other – a great desire to overcome obstacles – movement by the sounds of the tonic quarter-chord. An ascending quart exclamation imitates a horn signal – a fanfare intonation. What is not a manifestation of the children's musical narrative?

In V. Rebikov, you can find a different "set" of "children's" topos, for example, in "Silhouettes" Op. 31. In the miniature "A girl rocks her doll", a recognizable rhythmic figure of "rocking" is heard, and "children's" manifests itself in a limited melodic range (within the interval of a fifth), and what is especially it is important, in the deliberate primitiveness of the syncopated accompaniment, which creates the effect of childish awkwardness. It is further enhanced in the middle part of the piece by transferring to the upper register in the form of an octave tremolo with eighth durations. In addition, the term "temeramente" indicates to hold a note a little more than it should sound. In this context, "not observing" the duration of the notes can also be regarded as one of the manifestations of the children's narrative in music.

"Childishness" unexpectedly manifests itself through timbre. One of the simple associative series associated with the sound, for example, of a harpsichord, was considered "antiquity". But the XX century "discovered" other meanings. For example, F. Busoni, under the impression of a Chikkering harpsichord, composed "A Sonatina for the use of a child by Madeleine M., an American, composed for a clavichembalo" (1915). D. Shostakovich brilliantly used the harpsichord leitembra in the transmission of the image of Ophelia – "the image of a cute half-child girl" – in the music for the drama "Hamlet" in the film directed by G. Kozintsev (1964) ^{[6, p. 178]}. Only before her death, Ophelia "frees herself" from the conventional secular framework, takes on the appearance of an artless girl, "matures", which is expressed in an unexpected change of timbre – from mechanical harpsichord to sadly absurd strings.

As for the form, in the literary tradition, the narrator's conversation is accompanied by messages about the beginning and end of the narrative. For this, special words are used – "A long time ago", "Once upon a time" or "That's the end of the fairy tale, and who listened – well done." However, it happens that the story itself has no pronounced signs and the detection of boundaries becomes a difficult interpretive task. T. Terekhova and S. Malakhova present the narrative in the form of a "State – Event–State" scheme, where "The event is the core of the narrative around which the story is built. The event brings a person out of the static state, is a field of possibilities in which identity is constructed ^{[7, p. 146]}. Linguists designate the middle part (the core of the narrative) as a "form of transgression", "status quo", which clothe disorderly eventfulness in a "stylized cultural form of narrative" ^{[7, p. 146]}. The conclusion, or the third part, is the same static, but of a different dynamic level, the "epilogue", the end of the story. It is possible that the presented scheme is conditional, but in this case we will stick to it.

Let's turn to the analysis of the thumbnail. A simple three–part form allows you to conditionally divide it into State – Event - State (10t.+8t.+5t.). Explication does not imply a beginning, but there are signs of completion – a fermated pause, dynamic and tempo remarks. We will talk about them below. Further, the middle phase is marked by exceptional events, where the rules take unexpected forms, in which the character shows his own subjectivity, after which he returns to a calm state. E. Popova describes the types of narrative. To one of them – the third–person - the linguist characterizes an unpersonalized omniscient narrator-creator who does not belong to the world of the text and does not have pragmatic motivation, "tries to be inconspicuous, "skipping" to the foreground <...> characters whose thoughts he verbalizes" ^{[8, p. 224]}.

So, let's turn to the miniature of V. Rebikov. Its theme refers us to W. A. Mozart's Sonata K. 545 C-dur. It is noteworthy that in the composer's own catalog it is listed as "Eine kline Klavir Sonate f?r anf?nger". It is assumed that the Sonata was written for one of Mozart's students (as a teaching aid), but for whom it is unknown. The Sonata was first published in 1805 under the title "Sonata facile pour le piano".

Here is what is noted in the theme of the sonata by musicologists: Y. Danilova emphasizes the presence of attributive signs of the "image-character of a young flirtatious maid" ^{[9, p. 33]}, I. Chernousova sees the embodiment of the same character in the changes of directions of movement, an abundance of decorations that produce a comic effect, "often against the background of fussy movement in the left hand (according to the type of Albertian basses), curtsey figures, imitation" ^{[10, p. 268]}.

Let's compare the themes of V. A. Mozart and V. Rebikov. The melody of the miniature has a lot of things in it that it has in common not so much with the beginning of the Sonata as with the style of W. A. Mozart. This is the tonality, musical size and general forms of movement, expressed in compliance with the rhythmic formula, however, with a reservation for a "childish decoding" of the duration of a quarter-lined two-sixteenth instead of a quarter with a dot two-sixteenth.

Example 1                                                             

V. A. Mozart Sonata K. 545 I ch. V. Rebikov "Lesson preparation"

                                                                              Op. 37 No. 2

The recognition of the melody is given by the accompaniment. In V. Rebikov's interpretation, "Alberti's figures" emphasize softness, which undoubtedly exposes the idea of V. A. Mozart. In this case, the form of movement is observed, but with significant harmonic changes – in the accompaniment, instead of the usual Mozart D, D sounds with an increased II stage, and it dissonates with the sound "d" in the melody.

Of the similar, however, with a small reservation, it is possible to note the pedal designation. "Overexposure" of individual notes, primarily basses, in the interpretation of Mozart's lyrical themes is considered the norm ^{[11, p. 183]}. V. Rebikov intentionally "mixes" both harmonies on one pedal, thereby showing that, on the one hand, the child is trying to comply with the rules, and, on the other, lacks elementary skill and the harmonic "dirt" is heard. Ambiguity is manifested in the structure of the topic. Instead of Mozart's I-III-V-VII, the heroine interprets the theme from the III stage – III-V-I-II, preserving the rhythmic framework of the original theme. Such boldness is supported by bright dynamics: in Mozart, the beginning is indicated by the sign p in the girl – mf. From the 3rd bar, the young pianist literally "rushes" to the first note, creating the effect of "reverse perspective", which is not peculiar to the theme of V. A. Mozart.

Example 2

Bars 5 and 6 represent a small improvisation with a departure into the dominant key, but from the 7th bar the main theme returns in the same initially distorted form. The first part ends on the dominant, enhanced fermated pause. Thus, in the first section of the miniature, a motivic structure appears contradictory from the inside – is Mozart not Mozart? – preparing the listener for further events.

Example 3

Measure 11 opens the second section of the form and demonstrates an enthusiastic hymn to the magnificent summer nature. The episode is full of delays, seventh chords, harmonic deviations in the VI and II major stages.

Example 4

What follows looks like a tonal reprise. The theme repeats itself, but on a different dynamic level – harmony suddenly changes (DIn-dur) and tempo changes (Piu mosso).

Example 5

Now we should stop at fermated pauses. Familiarity with scientific sources regarding pauses has shown that pausology, an integrative scientific discipline, uses the achievements of linguistics, rhetoric, speech culture, the practice of teaching acting skills and is actively developing nowadays. With regard to the application of knowledge from the mentioned sphere in musicology, it is necessary to state gaps – and this despite the fact that the relevance of the development of this problem in music science is obvious. The generalization of information about pauses, which we carried out based on the analysis of available sources, allows us to deduce certain qualities in pauses. From the variety of statements by I. Braudo, A. Goldenweiser, V. Gornostaeva, E. Kurt, G. Neuhaus. N. Perelman, I. Savshinsky, G. Tsypin, E. Fischer the most systematic statements of N. Korykhalova and S. Feinberg. So, S. Feinberg in his work "Pianism as art" reflects that a pause ("silenced") exposes a musical background on which "new images should arise" ^{[12, p. 344]}.

N. Korykhalova in the monograph "At the second Piano" structured pauses into constructive (structural, syntactic, rhythmic), expressive ("speaking") and dramatic (declamatory). "A pause," the pianist writes, "can be a climax, and such a climax can make no less impression than the loudest chord" ^{[13, p. 345]}.

Let's ask ourselves the question: to what level of narrative do the fermated pauses in the analyzed play belong and what are their functions? Let's turn to philologists. According to V. Milovidov, "the pause in the event that is being told and the pause in the event of the story are ontologically and functionally different, they cannot be mixed ^[14]. In other words, it is necessary to distinguish between pauses, the actions of which extend to short units in the text, those that N. Korykhalova calls constructive, and pauses of a wide range of action, the so-called formative. Pause is the sign "signified without signifier" ^[14]. By itself, it cannot be semanticized declaratively (grief, suffering, joy, delight), it only contributes to the semanticization of the elements of the musical text surrounding it, in other words, it requires context.

There are four fermated pauses in miniature. We remind you of the program:

A girl is learning a play / And through the open window, the scent of lilacs and roses call her to the garden / The girl makes mistakes / and runs away to the garden //

The first and last pauses are quite long – half the duration, reinforced by the fermata, it becomes an intensifier of the semantics of the absurd. What makes musical material absurd – even outside of a fermated pause? The conflict between "as it should be" (Mozart) and "as it really is" (Rebikov). Pauses intensify this conflict, stretching it in time, in weight. "A pause at the level of an event that is described in a narrative text is identical to a pause in a theatrical production. <...> the pause makes the collision of what was before the pause with what follows after more vivid and impressive" ^[14].

Pauses (tt. 10, 18) in the storytelling event, formative. They also serve as an intensifier of meaning formation. These are, in a way, open doors for entering into another fragment of the narrative, increasing the tension that resolves as you enter into a new event fragment. Such pauses prepare the listener's consciousness to accept "new" information, free "consciousness from the texture of the text itself – from the "small things" of events, from the flickering of characters" ^[14].

Thus, the fermated pauses (tt. 10, 18) will be the operators of meaning formation to the pauses of the event (tt. 2, 23). Their relationship is a multi–level chain of narration from Mozart to Rebikov, from Rebikov to Mozart and, finally, to the girl, the performer of her version of the play – with all the pauses necessary for this event.

From the point of view of the interpretation of the play, with the help of a certain set of performing means, it is possible to give a narrative to the play. For example, by slowing down the pace, narrowing or, conversely, expanding the field of dynamics, you can achieve the effect of an objective narrative from the third person.

Summing up the research, we emphasize that the attempt to involve concepts and data related to the theory of narrative in musical analysis is significantly enriched with meanings. Narrativity acts as a special quality of the musical text, its dramaturgy. Two different narratives are embedded within the same plot and show two sides of the same events, giving out obvious ambiguity. The musical whole begins with simple, perhaps humorous material, with unexpected dramatic twists and turns. In addition, the study of narratives makes it possible to penetrate into the experience of an entire culture, in this case, classicism and modernity.

The structure of the children's narrative is characterized by certain syntactic features, the analysis of which showed how V. Rebikov skillfully simulated a large number of "children's mistakes", thereby proving the viability of the musical children's narrative.

Implicit conflict on the one hand, Mozart-Ryabikov, on the other – the heroine's desire to leave everything and run away, acts as a factor in the development of the narrative. The tonal basis is also dual, the fermated pauses are contradictory. In 1913, summing up his "exuberant" activity, the composer wrote: "Sounds for the sake of sounds were not my goal. The goal was the same – to find a combination of sounds that would convey a feeling. And if this combination turned out to be whole-tone or dissonant, then it came out by itself… Of course, it would be possible to come up with very unprecedented and very original combinations of sounds, but by all means the originality of sounds was not my goal. The goal was the same – to strongly convey a feeling or mood and infect the listener with it. Sounds are not a goal for me, but a means. A means to convey a feeling" ^{[15, p. 44]}.